so... close...
Jul. 10th, 2008 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7I am trying to finish the bodice of the blue kirtle. It is so close. Once I have stitched down the front of the strap, it will be done, and then I can throw it in detergent and water to soak for like three days because this hemp cord smells like cow shit. It is exceptionally good and supportive, yes, but Christ on a pogo stick, does it ever reek. I don't know why.
I found more hemp cord of almost the same type-- I forgot to mention, I didn't come out of Wal-Mart totally empty-handed. No, they no longer carry needlework supplies, but they do have hemp cord. It's not $5, like everyone's costuming sites from 2006 say, but it's less than the $12 A.C. Moore wants for it. Of course, I can't figure out which package has more in it, since AC moore measures it in weight and Wal-Mart in length. Thanks, guys.
Anyway. The Wal-Mart hemp has no odor. I can smell the A.C. Moore hemp across the room if it's hot and humid in there. I hope to Christ the smell fades with washing because I didn't get the Wal-Mart cord until I'd already corded the kirtle bodice.
I am worse than useless today. Yesterday I thought I was pretty bad, but today, the cramps are worse, plus I have an awful behind-the-eyes headache. It developed last night and I had to go to bed at half past midnight, though I'd intended to stay up and keep Z company while he pulled yet another near-all-nighter for this stupid fucking project with the god-damned baseball caps. (The client LIED about how many designs they had, and how many needed custom work, and now is upset that it's taking longer than the estimate? You LIED, motherfuckers!)
I don't usually get like this but I'm going to tentatively blame That Magical Woman Time of the Month, because my God, I am haemorrhaging to an alarming degree. This doesn't normally happen to me. And it took me completely by surprise when it started, but this time because I thought it was a week later than it was. Yes. I usually get it around the 8th-10th of the month, but I somehow didn't connect that to the fact that it was the 9th of July.
Is it really the 10th of July today? That doesn't seem like it's the right day, but I couldn't tell you what day I think it actually is. I'm so confused, spacy, vague, and unable to cope with reality, that I'm actually a bit worried-- I mean, I'm always like that, but not to this point. I am unable to process decisions like an adult. I am acting like the way various of my friends who take psycho-pharma describe themselves when not on it. Seriously.
So I am a bit concerned, but I'm not depressed or in any real pain, I just can't actually function. It's unnerving. And it's taken me a really long time to string enough sentences together to write this and actually convey what I mean, I think. But as long as I'm not operating heavy machinery, I suppose that's not really a big problem. I'm just going to sit here with my needle and continue my incompetent hand-sewing, and hope this goes away before the weekend.
I'm trying to get this tiny bit of sewing done. Doing it by hand because it's fiddly. Am I the only person who handsews everything that scares her? My handsewing is pathetic, but I like doing it. I don't get that satisfaction from machine sewing. I was scared of the machine before but now I'm terrified of the damn thing now that I know it can actually punch through my fingernails at will. Seriously.
And something's messed up in the tension-- it drops stitches and then cuts the upper thread like every two feet or so. It's obnoxious.
If only I were good at handsewing. I'm not, really.
I've been making this kirtle by the instructions on this site, and it's great and all-- if about 75-100 years later than I had meant to dress-- but the website is a bit out of date. Nothing about the instructions is bad, it's just that all the links are dead. "I won't bother explaining this, because this site has such a great tutorial I couldn't possibly say it better"-- and "this site" is a 404 not found. Ack! So while I've found more recent sites explaining most of the things, sometimes I'm not sure it's the same thing she was talking about. :/
(I have a very poor head for technical language, and so I do not understand the difference between cartridge pleating and box pleating and have no idea how I'm going to attach this skirt.)
Anyway, I finally finally followed enough of the links that I found one that's still being updated, and through her site I found her livejournal and lo! There's a whole world of these people!
It's just funny how costuming websites in particular (lots of niches do this, i'm just in this one at the moment) tend to accumulate in little weird niches. I just happened to be in a 2004 niche and while most of the people involved are still out there, they've mostly changed web hosts, reshuffled their website, or in general orphaned the links. I was stuck in a four-years-ago ghetto. I finally have broken out of it and found where all these people went, including I think the current LJ of the woman who wrote the tutorials in the first place, so I am going to message her and ask if it is her, and if it is, thank her profusely.
Seriously-- if you're making anything remotely like that style, or just want to teach yourself basic pre-modern sewing techniques, she's got some fabulous no-nonsense detailed instructions that do not assume you know anything. Especially if you want a rectangles-and-gores smock for anything pre-Elizabethan. And, once made up, the dress looks an awful lot like the 100-years-earlier style I was initially going for, only with the added bonus of having somewhere for my boobs to go. So I'm going for it.
Anyway, I've spent today's moments of consciousness greedily reading the comment threads of various currently-active costumers, which has been entertaining and thought-provoking if nothing else.
But... all these hand-sewers who talk about how great it is and they can get all this work done in a Zen-like trance while watching TV? Well... I don't own a TV. Instead I entertain myself by reading stuff on the Internet.
Yeah, you can't really hand-sew while looking at stuff on the Internet. The backs of the straps on the kirtle bodice looked like a blind-drunk epileptic off his meds sewed them on.
Good thing I don't care.
(On the plus side, I hand-sewed the bodice panels together, simply because I couldn't puzzle out how I was meant to do them on a machine (there's... no seam allowance. What?) and that looks fantastic. The moral of the story is, whipstitching is impossible to fuck up but I can't backstitch for shit.)
Edit: I just realized I pinned the strap in place using the sewing needle instead of a pin, so now I have to unpin it and repin it and then hope I don't lose the needle in the process. I am really not doing so great at this whole "reality" lark at all.
I found more hemp cord of almost the same type-- I forgot to mention, I didn't come out of Wal-Mart totally empty-handed. No, they no longer carry needlework supplies, but they do have hemp cord. It's not $5, like everyone's costuming sites from 2006 say, but it's less than the $12 A.C. Moore wants for it. Of course, I can't figure out which package has more in it, since AC moore measures it in weight and Wal-Mart in length. Thanks, guys.
Anyway. The Wal-Mart hemp has no odor. I can smell the A.C. Moore hemp across the room if it's hot and humid in there. I hope to Christ the smell fades with washing because I didn't get the Wal-Mart cord until I'd already corded the kirtle bodice.
I am worse than useless today. Yesterday I thought I was pretty bad, but today, the cramps are worse, plus I have an awful behind-the-eyes headache. It developed last night and I had to go to bed at half past midnight, though I'd intended to stay up and keep Z company while he pulled yet another near-all-nighter for this stupid fucking project with the god-damned baseball caps. (The client LIED about how many designs they had, and how many needed custom work, and now is upset that it's taking longer than the estimate? You LIED, motherfuckers!)
I don't usually get like this but I'm going to tentatively blame That Magical Woman Time of the Month, because my God, I am haemorrhaging to an alarming degree. This doesn't normally happen to me. And it took me completely by surprise when it started, but this time because I thought it was a week later than it was. Yes. I usually get it around the 8th-10th of the month, but I somehow didn't connect that to the fact that it was the 9th of July.
Is it really the 10th of July today? That doesn't seem like it's the right day, but I couldn't tell you what day I think it actually is. I'm so confused, spacy, vague, and unable to cope with reality, that I'm actually a bit worried-- I mean, I'm always like that, but not to this point. I am unable to process decisions like an adult. I am acting like the way various of my friends who take psycho-pharma describe themselves when not on it. Seriously.
So I am a bit concerned, but I'm not depressed or in any real pain, I just can't actually function. It's unnerving. And it's taken me a really long time to string enough sentences together to write this and actually convey what I mean, I think. But as long as I'm not operating heavy machinery, I suppose that's not really a big problem. I'm just going to sit here with my needle and continue my incompetent hand-sewing, and hope this goes away before the weekend.
I'm trying to get this tiny bit of sewing done. Doing it by hand because it's fiddly. Am I the only person who handsews everything that scares her? My handsewing is pathetic, but I like doing it. I don't get that satisfaction from machine sewing. I was scared of the machine before but now I'm terrified of the damn thing now that I know it can actually punch through my fingernails at will. Seriously.
And something's messed up in the tension-- it drops stitches and then cuts the upper thread like every two feet or so. It's obnoxious.
If only I were good at handsewing. I'm not, really.
I've been making this kirtle by the instructions on this site, and it's great and all-- if about 75-100 years later than I had meant to dress-- but the website is a bit out of date. Nothing about the instructions is bad, it's just that all the links are dead. "I won't bother explaining this, because this site has such a great tutorial I couldn't possibly say it better"-- and "this site" is a 404 not found. Ack! So while I've found more recent sites explaining most of the things, sometimes I'm not sure it's the same thing she was talking about. :/
(I have a very poor head for technical language, and so I do not understand the difference between cartridge pleating and box pleating and have no idea how I'm going to attach this skirt.)
Anyway, I finally finally followed enough of the links that I found one that's still being updated, and through her site I found her livejournal and lo! There's a whole world of these people!
It's just funny how costuming websites in particular (lots of niches do this, i'm just in this one at the moment) tend to accumulate in little weird niches. I just happened to be in a 2004 niche and while most of the people involved are still out there, they've mostly changed web hosts, reshuffled their website, or in general orphaned the links. I was stuck in a four-years-ago ghetto. I finally have broken out of it and found where all these people went, including I think the current LJ of the woman who wrote the tutorials in the first place, so I am going to message her and ask if it is her, and if it is, thank her profusely.
Seriously-- if you're making anything remotely like that style, or just want to teach yourself basic pre-modern sewing techniques, she's got some fabulous no-nonsense detailed instructions that do not assume you know anything. Especially if you want a rectangles-and-gores smock for anything pre-Elizabethan. And, once made up, the dress looks an awful lot like the 100-years-earlier style I was initially going for, only with the added bonus of having somewhere for my boobs to go. So I'm going for it.
Anyway, I've spent today's moments of consciousness greedily reading the comment threads of various currently-active costumers, which has been entertaining and thought-provoking if nothing else.
But... all these hand-sewers who talk about how great it is and they can get all this work done in a Zen-like trance while watching TV? Well... I don't own a TV. Instead I entertain myself by reading stuff on the Internet.
Yeah, you can't really hand-sew while looking at stuff on the Internet. The backs of the straps on the kirtle bodice looked like a blind-drunk epileptic off his meds sewed them on.
Good thing I don't care.
(On the plus side, I hand-sewed the bodice panels together, simply because I couldn't puzzle out how I was meant to do them on a machine (there's... no seam allowance. What?) and that looks fantastic. The moral of the story is, whipstitching is impossible to fuck up but I can't backstitch for shit.)
Edit: I just realized I pinned the strap in place using the sewing needle instead of a pin, so now I have to unpin it and repin it and then hope I don't lose the needle in the process. I am really not doing so great at this whole "reality" lark at all.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 08:46 pm (UTC)/Eva
no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 09:36 pm (UTC)Oh yes, the funny part was looking at everyone's userinfo and saying "Oh look, there's
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Date: 2008-07-10 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 09:35 pm (UTC)But I think that will improve. Maybe we should go out for steaks tonight.
Um, if Z ever comes home. I haven't heard from him in 4 hours and it's 5:30... He could probably use some hardcore nutrients too, he's chronically iron-deficient and underweight, and doesn't take stress like this well. He'll probably get horribly sick next week-- I just hope I don't.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 02:46 am (UTC)I have not only a multivitamin, but a joint health supplement I've been taking to try and help with my awful knees-- and that needs to be taken thrice daily-- and a calcium supplement because my mother and grandmother both have osteoporosis, as did my other grandmother, so I'm definitely at big risk, and guess what? Calcium can't be absorbed all at once, so you've got to take it in 500 mg increments twice daily.
I'm not even on any medication and I'm already overwhelmed with pills.
But you're right-- the period acts as a health check, because if I have a bad one then for damn sure I haven't been taking proper care of myself.
I don't know how men keep track of their health or, for that matter, the passage of time. (I've never missed a period in sixteen years, and I've almost always been exactly 29 days between them. And yet it still catches me by surprise every time and I say, Goodness, has it been a month? You think I'd have the hang of it by now but no.)
Though I know it's not just me-- the poor boyfriend came home, calculating that he'd worked 48 hours in 4 days, and said, "I need something nutritious to eat." He then proceeded to wolf down two helpings of the mostly-vegetable stir fry I'd already begun to make, and then munched on junk food the rest of the night. I promised him steaks tomorrow, somehow. Nutrition density. I seem to be craving spinach.
I do feel better after all those vegetables. I will probably get an insane amount of sleep tonight, though. Hopefully that will help further.